by Sam Eastland
Viktor Kohl, who had been anxious to improve ties with the nearby Russian community, was so shamed by his son’s dismissal that he refused to transfer Stefan to the local school in Rosenheim. Instead, he handed the boy, then aged fifteen, over to the local butcher, a leviathan of a man named Werner Grob, to be trained in a profession in which, he felt, the boy’s inherent violence might find some respectable outlet.
Emil, meanwhile, graduated from the school at Krasnoyar and won a scholarship to study at the University of Kiev. Although he did not bear the scars of the beatings which his brother had endured, Emil had not escaped unscathed. The time he spent at school in Krasnoyar had left him deeply troubled from having lived so long in constant fear. Emil found it difficult, if not impossible, to set aside his mental barricades. As a result, he made few friends and retreated increasingly into the world of his studies, where numbers and equations became the only things on which he felt he could truly rely.
His parents understood very little of Emil’s work, or of the effect it was having on him. In their eyes, as the first university-educated member of the family, Emil could do no wrong.
Meanwhile, Stefan continued his apprenticeship with Werner Grob, the butcher. Grob was a sensible, competent and monosyllabic man. He proved a good mentor to the boy, who had been all but disowned by his family.
Once a week, Stefan and Grob loaded up their butcher’s cart and rode to the marketplace at Krasnoyar, where Grob had a good reputation.
At first, Stefan had been nervous about returning to Krasnoyar, but he was surprised, and profoundly relieved, to hear none of the jeering or the angry voices which had followed him through his schooling. Instead, customers barely looked him in the eye as he stood among the hanging carcasses of pigs, chickens and sheep, blood-smeared hands heaving severed hearts, tongues and kidneys on to the scale to be weighed.
What Stefan did not realise was that people were afraid of him. He was no longer someone to be picked on with impunity by anyone who wished to try their luck. The boy they had once known was quickly growing into a man who, the inhabitants of Krasnoyar were quick to realise, would be unlikely to forget the cruelty they had shown to him.
In the months that followed, as Stefan learned his trade, he began to resign himself to the possibility that he belonged in the bloody apron of a butcher. But he was lonely, and frustrated by the way that his life was turning out. Some nights, as he lay in bed, listening to his father snoring down the hall and knowing he was barely welcome in his parents’ house, a gaping emptiness would open in his heart.
After a year as the butcher’s apprentice, Stefan was sometimes allowed to go alone to Krasnoyar on market day. On that same hot August afternoon that the Tsar declared war against Germany, a fact of which no one in Rosenheim was yet aware, Stefan was returning home when his horse shied away from something lying in the ditch. Bringing the cart to a halt, Stefan set the brake and climbed down to see what had startled the animal. What he found was a man, clothed in little more than rags and so bruised about the face that at first he appeared to be dead. But as Stefan dragged the body from the ditch, ready to bring it to the undertaker, the stranger opened his eyes.
‘Don’t hit me again,’ he pleaded deliriously, his lips split and teeth stained red.
‘There is nothing to fear,’ Stefan assured him as he wiped the man’s face with a handkerchief. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Who did this to you?’
The man said his name was Anatoli Bolotov and that he was a pilgrim from the village of Markha, near the city of Irkutsk in Siberia. Judging from the state of his clothes and the fact that his only possession was a Bible, Stefan had little reason to doubt that the pilgrim was telling the truth. After two years of wandering the country, Bolotov had just begun his journey home when he walked into the town of Krasnoyar.
There, while begging for food, he had been set upon, beaten senseless and heaved into a ditch on the outskirts of the town by some of the same people who had made a sport of beating Stefan Kohl.
Recalling the times he had stopped on this same road to wipe the blood from his own face, Stefan lifted Bolotov on to the cart, since the man was too weak to climb aboard himself. Then he brought the pilgrim into Rosenheim and presented the man to his father.
After hearing Bolotov’s story, and seeing the Bible he clutched against his chest, Viktor Kohl warily agreed to feed him and put a roof over his head for the night. ‘But only one night!’ he decreed.
At the table, while they ate, Bolotov spoke of his travels across Russia.
At first, Viktor Kohl seemed to warm to the man, impressed by his ability to quote so freely from the Scriptures, but there came a point in the evening, as Bolotov began to speak about the details of his faith, that the look in Viktor’s eyes began to change.
‘It is on our own flesh,’ said Bolotov, ‘that we must inscribe our dedication to the Lord.’
‘And what is meant by that?’ demanded Viktor Kohl.
‘The end is near,’ explained Bolotov, ‘and we must abandon not only the consolations of the flesh, but the things that make such consolation possible.’
Viktor Kohl set down his knife and fork. Slowly, he pushed his plate away and rose to his feet, watched by his wife, Christiana, and his son, neither of whom had yet fathomed the meaning of those words.
‘I know you now,’ whispered Viktor Kohl. ‘I know what group of outlaws you belong to and I will not foul the air in this house by even mentioning their name.’
‘I will not deny it to a fellow man of God,’ replied Bolotov.
‘There is no fellowship between a man like me,’ said Viktor, his lip curling in disgust, ‘and one who does what you have done in the name of Jesus Christ.’
‘These are they,’ Bolotov answered defiantly, ‘who follow the Lamb wheresoever he goeth. These alone are redeemed.’
‘Do not obscure your deeds with holy words!’ shouted Viktor, aiming a finger at the door. ‘Now get out!’
‘You promised to take him in,’ argued Stefan. ‘What has he done to offend you, except to speak his mind?’
But Bolotov was already on his feet, a look of tired resignation on his face. He turned to Christiana, who by now could only stare at him in uncomprehending fear. ‘I thank you for the meal,’ he told her quietly.
‘You can’t just throw him out into the night!’ Stefan protested.
‘He is no stranger to the darkness, I assure you,’ answered Viktor.
As Bolotov left the house, Stefan followed him out.
It was raining and the air was raw and cold, although Bolotov barely seemed to notice.
‘Forgive my father, please,’ begged Stefan.
‘Do not blame him,’ replied Bolotov. ‘It is my fault for thinking that I could speak as one man of God to another.’
‘What was it in your words that angered him?’ Stefan asked, confused. ‘I’ve never seen him act like this before.’
‘I simply told him a truth which he did not want to hear.’
‘And what truth is that?’
They had been standing side by side under the eaves of the house, where they were partially sheltered from the rain. But now Bolotov turned to Stefan, and his gaze burned into the young man. ‘The truth is that only by freeing yourself of earthly chains can you enter the kingdom of heaven.’
‘That happens to us all when we die,’ said Stefan, ‘and it seems to me that he is well aware of that already.’
‘But what he does not know, or chooses not to see, is that the only way to prove yourself worthy of heaven is to cut through those chains while we still live. Only those who separate themselves from the flock will be saved.’
‘And the rest?’ asked Stefan. ‘What will happen to them?’
‘They will be swept away in a tide of blood.’ Gently, Bolotov took hold of Stefan’s arm. ‘Do not be afraid of what I’m saying. We all have a chance to prove our worth. But it takes courage. More courage than most men and women possess. It is not enough simply to ackn
owledge the suffering of Christ. Anyone can do that. What we must do is test the mettle of our faith by showing that we, too, are capable of suffering for what we believe. It requires setting out on a new path, instead of the one which has been chosen for us by those who think they know us better than we know ourselves.’
Stefan thought of the day his father had handed him over to the butcher. There had been no discussion. No words of comfort. Not even a hand on his shoulder to offer consolation. ‘I learned to accept it,’ he muttered, as much to himself as to the pilgrim.
‘But why should you?’ exclaimed Bolotov. ‘Why spend your life trying to meet the expectations of those who cannot even meet those same demands themselves? Why not begin a journey which only the bravest can make? No man is free until he has proven himself to himself.’
At almost any other time, Bolotov’s words might have rung hollow to Stefan Kohl but, in that moment, they struck him so profoundly that he felt as if he had been sleeping all his life and had only now awakened.
As they stood there, watching the rain pour from the roof like threads of mercury, and Bolotov went on to explain exactly what he meant by the severing of earthly chains, Stefan was appalled by his description of the bloody rituals, but also fascinated by such a brutal gesture of commitment. No one had ever asked him to sacrifice anything before, as if nothing he had was worth consigning to his faith. To his amazement, Stefan realised that he was not afraid, even if that sacrifice was to be paid in his own flesh. For the first time in his life, he glimpsed the possibility of a life filled with a purpose that was greater than the one for which he had been taught to settle.
‘Come with me,’ said Bolotov.
Those words seemed to snatch the air from Stefan’s lungs. ‘Now?’ he gasped.
‘Now or never!’ exclaimed Bolotov. ‘Your chance may never come again. Everywhere I go I hear talk of war with Germany. It may already be too late. The heritage of your forefathers, which you have struggled so hard to maintain, will be the doom of this place. Soon the Russians will drive you from this land and send you back where you came from.’
‘But this is where I am from!’ Stefan protested. ‘I have never known anything else.’
‘They don’t care about that,’ Bolotov told him. ‘In their eyes, you have already been tried and convicted. All that remains now is for the sentence to be served. But you should consider yourself lucky.’
‘And why is that?’ he asked.
‘Unlike them,’ Bolotov waved his hand out into the dark, where chinks of light shone through the shuttered windows of houses, ‘you have a choice. One way or another, you are about to become an exile, but which kind you become is up to you.’
Bolotov promised to wait until sunrise, in order to give the young man a chance to make up his mind.
‘You will have your answer before then,’ Stefan assured him.
As soon as he stepped back inside the house, he was confronted by his father. ‘Did you speak with him?’
‘Yes,’ replied the son.
‘Don’t believe a word he spoke,’ warned Viktor. ‘His people are a poison on this earth.’
‘What he said made sense to me,’ answered Stefan.
‘What?’ Viktor laughed angrily. ‘Then perhaps you should go with him when he leaves!’
‘Maybe I will,’ said Stefan.
Viktor had only been trying to scare him, but now he paused as he realised that his son was serious. ‘I cannot stop you,’ he said. ‘You are old enough now to make your own decisions. Choose that beggar or choose your family, but know that you cannot have both.’
At that moment, Stefan’s mother entered the room. She had been listening, as afraid of her husband’s anger as she was of her son’s unyielding temperament. ‘Why must you always be so cruel?’ she shouted at Viktor.
The man stared at his wife, amazed that she would take any side but his.
She made a fist and struck him on the chest. ‘You cannot abandon your son!’
‘It’s all right,’ Stefan told his mother. ‘He did that a long time ago.’
‘Stay,’ she begged him.
But it was already too late. Until the moment when his father had laughed in his face, Stefan’s mind had still been clouded with doubt. But his father’s mockery brought back to him the memory of every insult he had endured at the school in Krasnoyar, and the echoing pain of the beatings which had accompanied them. The sound of that laughter clarified his mind. There are times in a person’s life when they cannot know if they have made the right decision until after that decision has already been made. And now he knew.
‘Remain with us,’ pleaded his mother, ‘here where you know you are safe.’
Stefan shook his head. ‘No one is safe any more,’ he replied.
The next day, just as Bolotov had predicted, Russian soldiers arrived from the barracks at Krasnoyar. With them came a rabble of self-appointed militia, armed with old shotguns, sledgehammers and kitchen knives.
The inhabitants of Rosenheim were given an hour to pack one suitcase each. Then, clutching their bags, they were marched to a barge, which waited for them on the banks of the Volga at Pokrovsk. After being ferried across the Volga to the railhead at Saratov they were put aboard cattle cars and transported to the German border, a journey which lasted several days. At the border, the Kohl family were met by their eldest son, Emil. By Imperial decree, he had been dismissed from the University of Kiev, along with all the other students of German or Austro-Hungarian extraction.
As the people of Rosenheim crossed over into a country they had never seen before, Stefan Kohl was not among them. Even before the soldiers had arrived in Rosenheim, Stefan had set out in the company of Bolotov on the long journey to Siberia.
1 June 1915
Tsarskoye Selo, summer estate of the Imperial Family
On the outskirts of the estate stood a small, flat-roofed cottage, flanked on either side by single-storey additions which gave to the structure the impression of a military bunker, with tall and narrow windows where gun slits might have been. The stonework of the house had been painted a warm orange yellow which, in the afternoon sun, glowed like the flesh of a ripe apricot.
Inside the house, whose rooms were small and crammed with mismatched furniture, sat the Tsarina Alexandra and her closest friend, Anna Vyroubova, to whom this cottage had been given as a gift, in order that she might be always close at hand.
For some minutes, there had been no other sound but the faint clink as their tea cups were lowered into saucers. Of the biscuits which Vyroubova had laid out on the small table that stood between them, only one remained. In what had become an almost daily ritual, there was always a single biscuit left untouched, as if by unspoken agreement.
It was the Tsarina who broke the silence. ‘I have just heard,’ she said, ‘that General Brusilov will soon begin a full retreat from Galicia. For all I know, it has already begun. Meanwhile, the Austrians are advancing.’
‘Can they be stopped?’ asked Vyroubova. She was a short, stout woman with a round face and heavy jaw. She wore her thick dark hair piled high upon her head. Her dress, with its simple, embroidered collar, had been carefully chosen not to outshine that of her benefactor, whose white feathered boa draped extravagantly across her shoulders and down into her lap.
‘Or could they even be slowed down?’ she added, glancing at the two walking sticks which leaned against her chair. Following injuries sustained in a train crash earlier that year, Vyroubova could barely move without those ugly canes and she hated the fact that she was now dependent on them. Even before the crash, there had been too many things on which she was dependent, including the woman who sat before her now.
‘Slowed down?’ echoed the Tsarina. ‘I doubt it. I have read in the official reports that, for every ten thousand of our wounded, we can provide only a single doctor. No wonder the men are dying in such numbers.’
‘But is it not true,’ Vyroubova offered, ‘that we have more men to lose? Surely, for e
very enemy soldier who dies in battle,’ she said encouragingly, ‘we can spare ten, perhaps even twenty men!’
‘We cannot afford to lose any!’ shouted the Tsarina.
Vyroubova flinched, as if she had received an electric shock. The Tsarina seldom raised her voice during these afternoon meetings and now Vyroubova felt a sudden sense of panic that she had finally said something which would lose her the use of this cottage, along with all the privileges to which she had become accustomed in her years of friendship with the Tsarina.
‘What good is our numerical superiority,’ continued the Tsarina, ‘when the enemy has thirty-six heavy machine guns for each battalion, and ours must manage with only two? And what hope do our sixty artillery battalions have against the three hundred and eighty battalions of those who now wage war against us?’
Vyroubova stared at her blankly. She did not know what a heavy machine gun was. She imagined that all machine guns must be heavy. And she had no idea what an artillery battalion consisted of. One gun? Ten? Ten thousand? ‘Our dear friend was right,’ she muttered. This friend, whom they rarely referred to by his full name, was Grigori Rasputin. His influence over the Romanovs, and the shrinking numbers of those who remained loyal to the family, was now so powerful that questions had been raised, even by members of the Russian parliament, as to whether the Tsar, or Rasputin, was truly in control of the country.
Fearing that the privacy of their correspondence had been compromised, Nicholas and Alexandra had taken to using code names to describe those in the inner circle of the Romanovs.
Their son Alexei was known as ‘Sunbeam’, while their youngest daughter Anastasia, had earned for herself the nickname of ‘Imp’. The Tsar himself had been christened ‘Blue Boy’, after a character in a children’s fairy tale. Vyroubova had been dubbed ‘the friend’, whereas Rasputin had become the ‘dear friend’.